"HOW DID I get here?" If you're looking for a philosophical, theological or gynaecological explanation, you're at the wrong website. But if you genuinely wonder why this page is on the screen in front of you - and how it got there - then the answer is that either your secretary or your 11-year-old started up your computer, logged into the Internet and loaded the Web Weavers site. Now you want to look at something else - maybe another part of this website, or maybe a different kind of site entirely. May we offer a few pointers to help you in your journey along the Electronic Superhighway, the Web, the Realms of Cyberspace or whichever other cliché you'd choose to describe the Internet?   How do I go somewhere else? There are four main ways: Click on a link. A link is usually a picture or an underlined word or two on the page you're looking at. When you move your mouse pointer over a link, the pointer usually changes into a hand. Here's an underlined link for you to try right now. It will take you to the top of this page. Click once in the text panel above this browser screen. In Internet Explorer it will be labelled Address. In Netscape Navigator it's labelled Location. The current Address/Location (which is for this page) will be highlighted and you can overtype a new address. Try it - type in www.yahoo.com, press the Enter key on your keyboard and you'll go to the web sight of the most popular search engine in the world. Before you go... click the Back button at the top of your browser screen (it's the same in Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) to come back to this page. Click on the Home button at the top of your browser screen (it's also the same in Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator). You will be taken to whichever page is set to load when you start your browser. It could be the Microsoft home page, the Netscape home page or the home page of your Internet service provider. Try it and see what appears. Again, before you go... click the Back button at the top of your browser screen (it's the same in Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) to come back to this page. Click on the Bookmarks button (Netscape Navigator) or Favorites (Internet Explorer) and look at the listing of websites which has been saved in your computer. Click on the name of a site to visit it. You can come back to this page by using the Back button.   How do I find other websites? The easiest way, for now, is to use a search engine, which is a website that helps you to find other websites. In either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, click on the Search button at the top of your browser screen. This will take you to the search page of Netscape or Microsoft respectively. Both present a list of search engines. Try one by clicking on its name. Search engines all work in much the same way: Type a keyword or phrase into a text panel, press the Enter key on your keyboard, and the search engine will look for sites that match your search. You may find a zillion sites that match a keyword search for "food" and very few or none that match the phrase "secretaries who accidentally put bicarbonate of soda in the coffee". You will almost always find a Help button on the search engine site to assist you if you get stuck.   How do I make a print-out of a website? First, make sure your computer is connected to a laser or inkjet printer and that the printer is switched on. Dot-matrix printers may do the job, too, but very slowly. In Netscape Navigator: Click on the Print button at the top of your browser screen. In Internet Explorer (it also works in Netscape Navigator): Click the File command, then Print. In both cases, follow the on-screen prompts, which should be associated with your printer set-up. And now, to confuse the issue: A page like this one should simply print as it is since it hasn't been designed in "frames". If a web page has a "frame" structure, Internet Explorer will offer you the option of printing the entire page or just the active frame. Netscape Navigator may print the active frame without asking if it's what you want. In Netscape Navigator you should see the option "Print Frame". If you do, cancel the command, then left-click anywhere inside the frame you want to print before you actually print it. That way you're likely to print the main contents of the page, for example, instead of the list of links down the left-hand side of the screen. Please note: Your printer may take some time, and use a lot of ink, to compose and print a web page which contains voluminous contents or numerous graphics.   How do I save a website on a disk? Before you try to transfer it to a 3.5" diskette, save it on your hard drive. A big site may not fit on a single diskette. Make a new folder on your hard drive and save the web page or website in this new folder. Call the folder something like "Downloads". If you don't know how to make a new folder or save something into a selected folder, ask your secretary or your 11-year-old. Click on the File command, then on Save As (if the web page has a simple, frame-free structure) or Save Frame As (if the page is part of a frame structure). The Save As dialog box will give you the options to save the web page: In the folder of your choice, such as "Downloads"; With the name of your choice, such as "Nice website"; With the extension of your choice, which should be either HTML (the format of a web page) or Text (which loses the web page formatting). Remember to save the frame you want - click inside it first if necessary to make it the "active" frame. Also remember that with older browsers, you can't save the images with the body of a web page - you have to save each image separately.   So how do I save an image on a web page? Make or choose a folder - for example, "Downloads" - as you might for anything else you save or "download" from the Internet. Right-click on the image you want to save. Select Save Image As (Netscape Navigator) or Save Picture As (Internet Explorer). Follow the prompts and make the appropriate selections when the Save As dialog box opens. Netscape Navigator will want you to save the picture in its original format, which will be either "JPEG" or "GIF". Internet Explorer may offer the further option of saving as a "Bitmap", which is the image format used in, for example, Windows Wallpaper images and the Windows Paint program. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator both offer the option of Set As Wallpaper if you'd like the web page image to become your desktop wallpaper when you start Windows.   Websites change often... how do I know I'm looking at the latest version of a web page? The page may be coded to update itself automatically, but to make sure: Click on the Reload button (Netscape Navigator) or Refresh (Internet Explorer). To be doubly sure, right-click on the part of the page that interests you and select Refresh Frame or Reload Frame.   How do I flag a website that I'd like to revisit later? Let's look at the two most popular browsers separately, and not in any preferred order: Internet Explorer. When you're at a site or a page you want to flag, click on the Favorites command at the very top of the browser screen, then on Add to Favorites. In the dialog box that opens, you can rename the web page if you want to. Its default name may be something like "index.html" - you can call it anything you like. Still in the dialog box, click on Create in, then either create a new folder for the page or store its address in an existing folder. Netscape Navigator When you're at a site or a page you want to flag, click on the Bookmarks button at the top of the browser screen, then on Add Bookmark. This will simply plonk the Bookmark at the end of your existing list of Bookmarks and Bookmark folders. If you prefer, click on the Bookmarks button at the top of the browser screen, then on File Bookmark. This will let you place the new Bookmark in the folder of your choice.   How do I organise and arrange my Bookmarks or Favorites? An excellent idea! As time goes by, you could end up with a ponderously long list of marked web pages unless you sort them out. Netscape Navigator. Click on the Bookmarks button at the top of the browser screen, then on Edit Bookmarks. A window will open which looks very much like the Windows Explorer window. You can drag Bookmarks around, move them from one folder to another, rename them, delete them, or whatever. Right-click on a Bookmark, then click on Bookmark Properties, to rename a Bookmark or edit its Internet address. Internet Explorer. Click on the Favorites command at the very top of the browser screen, then on Organise Favorites. The window which opens looks even more like the Windows Explorer window and works just like it. To rename a Favorite or edit its Internet address: Click on the Favorites button (not the Favorites command); Right-click on the name of a Favorite; Left-click on Rename.   Can I browse through websites more quickly without buying a faster modem? Yes. Here are three widely-used methods: 1. HIDE THE PICTURES If you're interested mainly in the text content of the websites you visit, save time by not making your browser load the images. Internet Explorer. Click on the Tools command (or View in older versions of IE), then on Internet Options. In the window that opens, click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to the Multimedia selection. De-select Show pictures, then click on OK. (You can re-select "Show pictures" later if you want images to load automatically.) Netscape Navigator. Click on the Edit command, then on Preferences. In the window that opens, click on Advanced in the Category panel. De-select Automatically load images, then click on OK. (You can re-select "Automatically load images" later if you want images to load automatically.) 2. USE THE "BACK" AND "FORWARD" BUTTONS In both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, the Back and Forward buttons can save time. If you want to return to a page you've just visited - for example, a home page - using Back should reload the page quickly from your computer's memory cache. If you use the "Home" link on the website, the page may have to reload on-line from the Internet server. A "Home" link is useful mainly to find your way back to the starting point when you've become so immersed in a website that you'd need ten clicks of the "Back" button to get back to the beginning. 3. DON'T WAIT FOR A WHOLE PAGE TO LOAD Why wait minutes for a complicated page to load through a slow connection when all you want to do is follow a link that displays right at the top of the page? You can't harm your computer or its software by clicking to a new website before the current page has loaded fully.   How do I learn a lot more about using the Internet? The newest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have comprehensive, built-in help files. Not everyone finds it easy to follow on-screen instructions. But try these help files before you rush out and buy a book or enrol in a class on "better surfing" or some such generalised subject. Copyright Web Weavers © 1998, 2003 URL: http://www.webweavers.co.za Email: sales@webweavers.co.za